


tattoos

by enoughiamagod



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Tattoos, another one of those tattoo fics, cecil's tattoos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enoughiamagod/pseuds/enoughiamagod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tattoos randomly appear on the skin of every Night Vale resident, and they have to figure out what it means. Cecil, however, has some unusual tattoos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> don't own.
> 
>  
> 
> 6/26/2015 - will probably not update anytime soon. I am working on some bigger fics and unfortunately this one has fallen to the side.

Cecil was five when his first tattoo appeared, a swirl of purple and black ink that danced across his forearm. There was no shape to it that his eyes could see, but his mom pulled out the Tattoo Divination for Dummies book every family kept and compared it to page after page, until she found a similar one, a smudge that predicted illness, and voices, and also rain the next week.  
Cecil made his first bloodstone offering as soon as he recovered from chicken pox and hallucinations, and in a freak rainstorm unusual for the early July month.

You could tell a family’s history by the wear of the pages, and Cecil’s family was no different. They had their fair share of good luck tattoos and warnings, as well as more unusual ones.

In fact, rainstorms are unusual in the desert, but this is an unusual town, and no one bats an eye.

His second, third, and fourth tattoos were the usual childhood and teenage ones, showing his life path.  
His subversive radio host tattoo appeared on his left shoulder blade. Initials of crushes, dates of broken arms, wheat banning, it was all there, just as everyone else’s was.

It was not until his sixteenth birthday that his tattoos were different.

His tattoos, for one, were only purple or black, inky like the void. His friends might have cerulean or vermillion or mauve but his tattoos never varied from those two colors.  
Second, his moved.  
It wasn’t as if they moved quickly. If he hadn’t paid careful attention, he wouldn’t have noticed at all. The tentacles that had appeared on his arms over the last few months pulsed slightly, seemed to grow and stretch and wave.

No one knew what they meant. 

Cecil himself took to wearing long sleeves, rolling them up only when he was broadcasting on the radio, as all the greats did before him. The tentacles stretched out and snaked around, and though they were frightening, he liked them. They were different.

When Carlos arrived and Cecil saw the test tube appear on his forearm, he knew right away that it was love.

When the smiling sun appeared on his neck, he knew.

But the tentacles? He did not know.


End file.
